Bajawa bad boiz

This is one of the hardest posts for me to write so far. To put all the stories and emotions and everything i thought and felt today down in text is tricky, but the uniqueness of all of our expirences today is well worth the effort and should be shared.

Today was great from the start. Woke up to eating amazing banana pancakes and then we hit the road to go trekking through mountain villages in Bajawa, which is where we are right now on the island of Flores. Danny and Sam and I stopped first to pick up a lunch for later in the day, and met our guide Jeremy, we all clicked right from the start. He got me to drink some natural energy drink off a lady selling them from her bike. It had ginger and tumeric and who knows what else but it worked, I felt like I had a red bull without the gross after taste! 

And then we drove to the first of 3 villages (all of which I can no longer remember the names 😔) and Theo, our dear driver dropped us off and we didn't see him again till much later in the day. The first village was full of kind people, mostly very old women and very young children. All the homes were built with tall triangle roofs and their hand woven clothes hanging beautifully on display of the front porches 

We learned about all the plants and treea that grow in and around the village like

Cotton, lemongrass, vanilla, sugar cane, pineapple, coconut, cashews. Etc Seriously it's like a grocery store right outside , they have got everything! We learned about how they propose

Marriage, with water buffalo tusks and and animal offerings. And about their daily life and beliefs, which of course are very different then of our own. I think it hits all us, even Sam, how much poverty we have been surrounded with here yet how utterly happy all these people are. It's a really great reality check honestly, they are always smiling, and giving and having fun with the people they love and in a beautiful place. I'm learning so much from these people and being reminded what's really important in life. They truly have the most beautiful, kind souls.. 

Vanilla. Smelled AMAZING. 

A very sweet lady and I. 

Cutest baby in the whole village. 

This is the view the village is blessed with..

After just under a two hour trek we wound up at the second village.. Again only very old and young people. This village was actually even more quite than the last, and we stopped and hung out for a few minutes before leaving to the third. The children here were adorable playing football and always making sure we were watching them, every kid here has a messi jersey, if you aren't team Barcelona you ain't shit. 

Lil messi.

Handsome devil Sammy, rocking the specs Jeremy created while walking barefoot from the last village.

Jeremy and Danny.. Goofs

On our way to the third and final

Village. Jeremy told us that we were lucky and somebody had created a new

House so there was a big ceremony to

Celebrate.. And when we got there I finally Understood why the other villages were empty. They were partying hard! 

Part of the ceremony.. 

The village was packed with people including some of Jeremys family

Who were extremly friendly and wanted us to sit and chat with them. All the people chew this beetroot stuff that makes them really freaky and toothless looking and Sam and I tried some.. It's

Spicy'sh and gritty in your mouth, yum. 

We were kind of celebrities there, not only was everybody hanging off of every word we said but they wanted pictures with us and just straight up laughing at us for not really any reason at all to my

Knowledge. But Especially so when one girl asked me to come sit with them to take pictures and I came over to sit on the bamboo log with them, fall down and break the bench and the ENTIRE crowd of people start laughing at me. Seriously embrassing, but hell I was laughing too, I think that might be one of those "you had to be there" moments but whatever! 

Sitting with the crowd 

While I was making a fool of myself Sam was throwing up gang symbols with the chikas,  Still rocking the specs.. I love this photograph.

After hanging around and watching the ceremony and the people we had to

Get away from the paparazzi and go to the natural hot springs. But if we thought the celebrity status was over we were wrong. Everybody there was talking to us and friendly and wanted to know so much about our lives and what we like and don't like and I had a lot of fun! Posing for photos with them and then I brought my camera out and holy man, everybody there wanted their photo taken! 

This was the group of college students I was mostly hanging with, i told the one guy in the middle he looked like Akon and without a doubt it went straight to

His head. 

Sam the photo bomber 

Rubber band boy.. These are just a few amongst many that I took. 

This day was magical. It was mind opening, it made you think about life and what's important and how different the world is and continues to be, even this place in 10 or 20 years i know will be completely different. I'm just really grateful for my life and that I got

The chance to expirence it the way it

Is now. This is why you travel.